MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

2/18 Full squad to workout Saturday

Manager Mike Quade will meet with the full squad on Saturday for his first official pep talk of the 2011 season. The session, scheduled for everyone in the weight room at Fitch Park before the workout, will give Quade the chance to “lay down a little bit of the direction I’d like to see us going, some things I’d like to do, both philosophically and technically.”

Quade, who replaced Lou Piniella last August as the Cubs manager, said he needs to set the tone from the start.

“I’m not allowed to say, ‘I’d like this and this’ from my club this year, and ‘I’d like this and this’ coming out of Spring Training if I don’t stress that with them,” Quade said. “They’re not going to get that by osmosis.”

Alfonso Soriano stopped by the Cubs facility Thursday, and the only position players who have not shown up at Fitch Park were third baseman Aramis Ramirez and shortstop Starlin Castro. Quade wasn’t worried about Castro since he played Winter Ball in the Dominican Republic and also had two weeks of instruction by Cubs coaches Ivan DeJesus and Franklin Font.

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